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Stanford Encyclopedia G.W.F. Hegel's aesthetics, or philosophy of art, forms part of the extraordinarily rich German aesthetic tradition that stretches from J.J. of Philosophy Winckelmann's Thoughts on the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (1755) and G.E. Lessing's Laocoon (1766) through Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) and Friedrich Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) to Friedrich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy (1872) and (in the twentieth century) Martin

Edward N. Zalta Uri Nodelman Colin Allen John Perry Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art (1935–6) and T.W. Adorno's Principal Editor Senior Editor Associate Editor Faculty Sponsor Aesthetic Theory (1970). Hegel was influenced in particular by Editorial Board Winckelmann, Kant and Schiller, and his own thesis of the “end of art” http://plato.stanford.edu/board.html (or what has been taken to be that thesis) has itself been the focus of close Library of Congress Catalog Data attention by Heidegger and Adorno. Hegel's philosophy of art is a wide ISSN: 1095-5054 ranging account of beauty in art, the historical development of art, and Notice: This PDF version was distributed by request to mem- the individual arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry. It bers of the Friends of the SEP Society and by courtesy to SEP contains distinctive and influential analyses of Egyptian art, Greek content contributors. It is solely for their fair use. Unauthorized sculpture, and ancient and modern tragedy, and is regarded by many as distribution is prohibited. To learn how to join the Friends of the one of the greatest aesthetic theories to have been produced since SEP Society and obtain authorized PDF versions of SEP entries, Aristotle's Poetics. please visit https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/ . 1. Hegel's Knowledge of Art Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2. Hegel's Texts and Lectures on Aesthetics Copyright c 2010 by the publisher

The Metaphysics Research Lab 3. Art, Religion and Philosophy in Hegel's System Center for the Study of Language and Information 4. Kant, Schiller and Hegel on Beauty and Freedom Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 5. Art and Idealization Hegel’s Aesthetics Copyright c 2010 by the author 6. Hegel's Systematic Aesthetics or Philosophy of Art

Stephen Houlgate 6.1 Ideal Beauty as such All rights reserved. 6.2 The Particular Forms of Art Copyright policy: https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/info/copyright/ 6.3 The System of the Individual Arts

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7. Conclusion individual works of art—to such an extent, indeed, that his aesthetics Bibliography constitutes, in Kai Hammermeister's words, “a veritable world history of Hegel's Collected Works art” (Hammermeister, 24). English Translations of Key Texts by Hegel Transcripts of Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics Hegel read both Greek and Latin (indeed, he wrote his diary partly in Secondary Literature in English Latin from the age of fourteen); he also read English and French. He was Secondary Literature in German thus able to study the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Other Relevant Works Virgil, Shakespeare and Molière in the original languages. He never Other Internet Resources travelled to Greece or Italy, but he did undertake several long journeys Related Entries from Berlin (where he was appointed Professor in 1818) to Dresden (1820, 1821, 1824), the Low Countries (1822, 1827), Vienna (1824) and Paris (1827). On these journeys he saw Raphael's Sistine Madonna and 1. Hegel's Knowledge of Art several paintings by Correggio (in Dresden), Rembrandt's Night Watch (in Amsterdam), the central section of the van Eyck brothers' Adoration Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) contains chapters on the ancient of the Lamb (in Ghent)—the wing panels were at that time in Berlin—and Greek “religion of art” (Kunstreligion) and on the world-view presented “famous items by the noblest masters one has seen a hundred times in in Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus the King. His philosophy of art copper engravings: Raphael, Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian” (in proper, however, forms part of his philosophy (rather than Paris) (Hegel: The Letters, 654). He liked to visit the theatre and opera, phenomenology) of spirit. The Phenomenology can be regarded as the both on his travels and in Berlin, and he was acquainted with leading introduction to Hegel's philosophical system. The system itself comprises singers, such as Anna Milder-Hauptmann (who sang in the first three parts: logic, philosophy of nature, and philosophy of spirit, and is set production of Beethoven's Fidelio in 1814), as well as the composer Felix out (in numbered paragraphs) in Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (whose revival of J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion philosophical Sciences (1817, 1827, 1830). The philosophy of spirit is in Hegel attended in March 1829). Hegel was also on close personal terms turn divided into three sections: on subjective, objective and absolute with Goethe and knew his drama and poetry especially well (as he did spirit. Hegel's philosophy of art or “aesthetics” constitutes the first sub- those of Friedrich Schiller). section of his philosophy of absolute spirit, and is followed by his philosophy of religion and his account of the history of philosophy. Adorno complains that “Hegel and Kant [ … ] were able to write major aesthetics without understanding anything about art” (Adorno, 334). This Hegel's philosophy of art provides an a priori derivation—from the very may or may not be true of Kant, but it is clearly quite untrue of Hegel: he concept of beauty itself—of various forms of beauty and various had an extensive knowledge and a good understanding of many of the individual arts. In marked contrast to Kant, however, Hegel weaves into great works of art in the Western tradition. Nor was Hegel's knowledge his philosophical study of beauty numerous references to and analyses of and interest restricted to Western art: he read (in translation) works of individual works of art—to such an extent, indeed, that his aesthetics Indian and Persian poetry, and he saw at first hand works of Egyptian art

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Indian and Persian poetry, and he saw at first hand works of Egyptian art extent (if at all) Hotho did in fact distort Hegel's account of art. It should in Berlin (Pöggeler 1981, 206–8). Hegel's philosophy of art is thus an a also be noted that Gethmann-Siefert's own interpretation of Hegel's priori derivation of the various forms of beauty that, pace Adorno, is aesthetics has been called into question (see Houlgate 1986a). informed and mediated by a thorough knowledge and understanding of Nevertheless Gethmann-Siefert is right to encourage readers with a individual works of art from around the world. knowledge of German to consult the published transcripts, since they contain a wealth of important material, and in some cases material that is 2. Hegel's Texts and Lectures on Aesthetics missing from the Hotho edition (such as the brief reference to Caspar David Friedrich in the 1820/21 lectures [VÄ, 192]). Hegel's published thoughts on aesthetics are to be found in pars. 556–63 of the 1830 Encyclopaedia. Hegel also held lectures on aesthetics in Hegel's philosophy of art has provoked considerable debate since his Heidelberg in 1818 and in Berlin in 1820/21 (winter semester), 1823 and death in 1831. Does he believe that only Greek art is beautiful? Does he 1826 (summer semesters), and 1828/29 (winter semester). Transcripts of hold that art comes to an end in the modern age? The answers one gives Hegel's lectures made by his students in 1820/21, 1823 and 1826 have to such questions should, however, be offered with a degree of caution, now been published (though no English translations of these transcripts for, sadly, there is no fully worked out philosophy of art by Hegel that are yet available) (see Bibliography). In 1835 (and then again in 1842) was officially endorsed by Hegel himself. The paragraphs in the one of Hegel's students, Heinrich Gustav Hotho, published an edition of Encyclopaedia are written by Hegel, but they are very brief and Hegel's lectures on aesthetics based on a manuscript of Hegel's (now lost) condensed and were intended to be supplemented by Hegel's lectures; the and a series of lecture transcripts. This is available in English as: G.W.F. transcripts of the lectures are written by students of Hegel (some taken Hegel, Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, 2 vols. down in class, some compiled afterwards from notes taken in class); and (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Most of the secondary literature on the “standard” edition of Hegel's lectures is actually a work put together Hegel's aesthetics (in English and German) makes reference to Hotho's by Hegel's student, Hotho (albeit using a manuscript by Hegel himself). edition. Yet according to one of the leading specialists on Hegel's There is, therefore, no definitive edition of Hegel's fully developed aesthetics, Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Hotho distorted Hegel's thought aesthetic theory that would trump all others and settle all debate. in various ways: he gave Hegel's account of art a much stricter systematic structure than Hegel himself had given it, and he supplemented Hegel's 3. Art, Religion and Philosophy in Hegel's System account with material of his own (PKÄ, xiii–xv). Gethmann-Siefert argues, therefore, that we should not rely on Hotho's edition for our Hegel's philosophy of art forms part of his overall philosophical system. understanding of Hegel's aesthetics, but should instead base our In order to understand his philosophy of art, therefore, one must interpretation on the available lecture transcripts. understand the main claims of his philosophy as a whole. Hegel argues in his speculative logic that being is to be understood as self-determining Since Hegel's manuscript, on which Hotho based much of his edition, has reason or “Idea” (Idee). In the philosophy of nature, however, he goes on been lost, it is no longer possible to determine with certainty to what to show that logic tells only half the story: for such reason is not extent (if at all) Hotho did in fact distort Hegel's account of art. It should something abstract—is not a disembodied logos—but takes the form of

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something abstract—is not a disembodied logos—but takes the form of understanding of reason and of itself as philosophy. In religion, however, rationally organized matter. What there is, according to Hegel, is thus not the process whereby the Idea becomes self-conscious spirit is just pure reason but physical, chemical and living matter that obeys represented—in images and metaphors—as the process whereby “God” rational principles. becomes the “Holy Spirit” dwelling in humanity. Furthermore, this process is one in which we put our faith and trust: it is the object of Life is more explicitly rational than mere physical matter because it is feeling and belief, rather than conceptual understanding. more explicitly self-determining. Life itself becomes more explicitly rational and self-determining when it becomes conscious and self- In Hegel's view, philosophy and religion—which is to say, Hegel's own conscious—that is, life that can imagine, use language, think and exercise speculative philosophy and Christianity—both understand the same truth. freedom. Such self-conscious life Hegel calls “spirit” (Geist). Reason, or Religion, however, believes in a representation of the truth, whereas the Idea, comes to be fully self-determining and rational, therefore, when philosophy understands that truth with complete conceptual clarity. It may it takes the form of self-conscious spirit. This occurs, in Hegel's view, seem strange that we would need religion, if we have philosophy: surely with the emergence of human existence. Human beings, for Hegel, are the latter makes the former redundant. For Hegel, however, humanity thus not just accidents of nature; they are reason itself—the reason cannot live by concepts alone, but also needs to picture, imagine, and inherent in nature—that has come to life and come to consciousness of have faith in the truth. Indeed, Hegel claims that it is in religion above all itself. Beyond human beings (or other finite rational beings that might that “a nation defines what it considers to be true” (Lectures on the exist on other planets), there is no self-conscious reason in Hegel's Philosophy of World History, 105). universe. Art, for Hegel, also gives expression to spirit's understanding of itself. It In his philosophy of objective spirit Hegel analyses the institutional differs from philosophy and religion, however, by expressing spirit's self- structures that are required if spirit—that is, humanity—is to be properly understanding not in pure concepts, or in the images of faith, but in and free and self-determining. These include the institutions of right, the through objects that have been specifically made for this purpose by family, civil society and the state. In the philosophy of absolute spirit human beings. Such objects—conjured out of stone, wood, color, sound Hegel then analyses the different ways in which spirit articulates its or words—render the freedom of spirit visible or audible to an audience. ultimate, “absolute” understanding of itself. The highest, most developed In Hegel's view, this sensuous expression of free spirit constitutes beauty. and most adequate understanding of spirit is attained by philosophy (the The purpose of art, for Hegel, is thus the creation of beautiful objects in bare bones of whose understanding of the world have just been sketched). which the true character of freedom is given sensuous expression. Philosophy provides an explicitly rational, conceptual understanding of the nature of reason or the Idea. It explains precisely why reason must The principal aim of art is not, therefore, to imitate nature, to decorate our take the form of space, time, matter, life and self-conscious spirit. surroundings, to prompt us to engage in moral or political action, or to shock us out of our complacency. It is to allow us to contemplate and In religion—above all in Christianity—spirit gives expression to the same enjoy created images of our own spiritual freedom—images that are understanding of reason and of itself as philosophy. In religion, however, beautiful precisely because they give expression to our freedom. Art's

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beautiful precisely because they give expression to our freedom. Art's Hegel agrees with Schiller (against Kant) that beauty is an objective purpose, in other words, is to enable us to bring to mind the truth about property of things. In his view, however, beauty is the direct sensuous ourselves, and so to become aware of who we truly are. Art is there not manifestation of freedom, not merely the appearance or imitation of just for art's sake, but for beauty's sake, that is, for the sake of a freedom. It shows us what freedom actually looks like and sounds like distinctively sensuous form of human self-expression and self- when it gives itself sensuous expression (albeit with varying degrees of understanding. idealization). Since true beauty is the direct sensuous expression of the freedom of spirit, it must be produced by free spirit for free spirit, and so 4. Kant, Schiller and Hegel on Beauty and Freedom cannot be a mere product of nature. Nature is capable of a formal beauty, and life is capable of what Hegel calls “sensuous” beauty (PK, 197), but Hegel's close association of art with beauty and freedom shows his clear true beauty is found only in works of art that are freely created by human indebtedness to Kant and Schiller. Kant also maintained that our beings to bring before our minds what it is to be free spirit. experience of beauty is an experience of freedom. He argued, however, that beauty is not itself an objective property of things. When we judge Beauty, for Hegel, has certain formal qualities: it is the unity or harmony that a natural object or a work of art is beautiful, on Kant's view, we are of different elements in which these elements are not just arranged in a indeed making a judgment about an object, but we are asserting that the regular, symmetrical pattern but are unified organically. Hegel gives an object has a certain effect on us (and that it should have the same effect on example of genuinely beautiful form in his discussion of Greek sculpture: all who view it). The effect produced by the “beautiful” object is to set the famous Greek profile is beautiful, we are told, because the forehead our understanding and imagination in “free play” with one another, and it and the nose flow seamlessly into one another, in contrast to the Roman is the pleasure generated by this free play that leads us to judge the object profile in which there is a much sharper angle between the forehead and to be beautiful (Kant, 98, 102–3). nose (Aesthetics, 2: 727–30).

In contrast to Kant, Schiller understands beauty to be a property of the Beauty, however, is not just a matter of form; it is also a matter of object itself. It is the property, possessed by both living beings and works content. This is one of Hegel's most controversial ideas, and is one that of art, of appearing to be free when in fact they are not. As Schiller puts it sets him at odds with those modern artists and art-theorists who insist that in the “Kallias” letters, beauty is “freedom in appearance, autonomy in art can embrace any content we like and, indeed, can dispense with appearance” (Schiller, 151). Schiller insists that freedom itself is content altogether. As we have seen, the content that Hegel claims is something “noumenal” (to use Kant's terminology) and so can never central and indispensable to genuine beauty (and therefore genuine art) is actually manifest itself in the realm of the senses. We can never see the freedom and richness of spirit. To put it another way, that content is freedom at work in, or embodied in, the world of space and time. In the the Idea, or absolute reason, as self-knowing spirit. Since the Idea is case of beautiful objects, therefore—whether they are the products of pictured in religion as “God,” the content of truly beautiful art is in one nature or human imagination—“it is all that matters [ … ] that the object respect the divine. Yet, as we have seen above, Hegel argues that the Idea appears as free, not that it really is so” (Schiller, 151). (or “God”) comes to consciousness of itself only in and through finite human beings. The content of beautiful art must thus be the divine in

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human beings. The content of beautiful art must thus be the divine in Note that the work of idealization is undertaken not (like modern fashion human form or the divine within humanity itself (as well as purely human photography) to provide an escape from life into a world of fantasy, but to freedom). enable us to see our freedom more clearly. Idealization is undertaken, therefore, in the interests of a clearer revelation of the true character of Hegel recognizes that art can portray animals, plants and inorganic nature, humanity (and of the divine). The paradox is that art communicates truth but he sees it as art's principal task to present divine and human freedom. through idealized images of human beings (and indeed—in painting— In both cases, the focus of attention is on the human figure in particular. through the illusion of external reality). This is because, in Hegel's view, the most appropriate sensuous incarnation of reason and the clearest visible expression of spirit is the It is worth noting at this stage that Hegel's account of art is meant to be human form. Colors and sounds by themselves can certainly communicate both descriptive and normative. Hegel thinks that the account he gives a mood, but only the human form actually embodies spirit and reason. describes the principal features of the greatest works of art in the Western Truly beautiful art thus shows us sculpted, painted or poetic images of tradition, such as the sculptures of Phidias or Praxiteles or the dramas of Greek gods or of Jesus Christ—that is, the divine in human form—or it Aeschylus or Sophocles. At the same time, his account is normative in so shows us images of free human life itself. far as it tells us what true art is. There are many things that we call “art”: cave paintings, a child's drawing, Greek sculpture, Shakespeare's plays, 5. Art and Idealization adolescent love poetry, and (in the twentieth century) Carl André's bricks. Not everything called “art” deserves the name, however, because not Art, for Hegel, is essentially figurative. This is not because it seeks to everything so called does what true art is meant to do: namely, give imitate nature, but because its purpose is to express and embody free sensuous expression to free spirit and thereby create works of beauty. spirit and this is achieved most adequately through images of human Hegel does not prescribe strict rules for the production of beauty; but he beings. (We will consider the exceptions to this—architecture and music does set out broad criteria that truly beautiful art must meet, and he is —below.) More specifically, art's role is to bring to mind truths about critical of work that claims to be “art” but that fails to meet these criteria. ourselves and our freedom that we often lose sight of in our everyday Hegel's critique of certain developments in post-Reformation art—such activity. Its role is to show us (or remind us of) the true character of as the aspiration to do no more than imitate nature—is thus based, not on freedom. Art fulfills this role by showing us the freedom of spirit in its contingent personal preferences, but on his philosophical understanding of purest form without the contingencies of everyday life. That is to say, art the true nature and purpose of art. at its best presents us not with the all too familiar dependencies and drudgery of daily existence, but with the ideal of freedom (see Aesthetics, 6. Hegel's Systematic Aesthetics or Philosophy of 1: 155–6). This ideal of human (and divine) freedom constitutes true Art beauty and is found above all, Hegel claims, in ancient Greek sculptures of gods and heroes. Hegel's philosophical account of art and beauty has three parts: 1) ideal beauty as such, or beauty proper, 2) the different forms that beauty takes in history, and 3) the different arts in which beauty is encountered. We

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in history, and 3) the different arts in which beauty is encountered. We —in which free individuals proceed to action that leads to conflict and, will look first at Hegel's account of ideal beauty as such. finally, to resolution (sometimes violently, as in Sophocles' Antigone, sometimes peacefully, as in Aeschylus' Oresteian trilogy). The gods 6.1 Ideal Beauty as such represented in Greek sculpture are beautiful because their physical shape perfectly embodies their spiritual freedom and is not marred by marks of Hegel is well aware that art can perform various functions: it can teach, physical frailty or dependence. The principal heroes and heroines of edify, provoke, adorn, and so on. His concern, however, is to identify art's Greek tragedy are beautiful because their free activity is informed and proper and most distinctive function. This, he claims, is to give intuitive, animated by an ethical interest or “pathos” (such as care for the family, as sensuous expression to the freedom of spirit. The point of art, therefore, in the case of Antigone, or concern for the welfare of the state, as in the is not to be “realistic”—to imitate or mirror the contingencies of everyday case of Creon), rather than by petty human foibles or passions. These life—but to show us what divine and human freedom look like. Such heroes are not allegorical representations of abstract virtues, but are living sensuous expression of spiritual freedom is what Hegel calls the “Ideal,” human beings with imagination, character and free will; but what moves or true beauty. them is a passion for an aspect of our ethical life, an aspect that is The realm of the sensuous is the realm of individual things in space and supported and promoted by a god. time. Freedom is given sensuous expression, therefore, when it is This distinction between pure beauty, found in Greek sculpture, and the embodied in an individual who stands alone in his or her “self-enjoyment, more concrete beauty found in Greek drama means that ideal beauty repose, and bliss [Seligkeit]” (Aesthetics, 1: 179). Such an individual must actually takes two subtly different forms. Beauty takes these different not be abstract and formal (as, for example, in the early Greek Geometric forms because pure sculptural beauty—though it is the pinnacle of art's style), nor should he be static and rigid (as in much ancient Egyptian achievement—has a certain abstractness about it. Beauty is the sensuous sculpture), but his body and posture should be visibly animated by expression of freedom and so must exhibit the concreteness, animation freedom and life, without, however, sacrificing the stillness and serenity and humanity that are missing, for example, in Egyptian sculpture. Yet that belongs to ideal self-containment. Such ideal beauty, Hegel claims, is since pure beauty, as exemplified by Greek sculpture, is spiritual freedom found above all in fifth- and fourth-century Greek sculptures of the gods, immersed in spatial, bodily shape, it lacks the more concrete dynamism such as the Dresden Zeus (which Hegel saw in the early 1820s) or of action in time, action that is animated by imagination and language. Praxiteles' Cnidian Aphrodite (see PKÄ, 143 and Houlgate 2007, 58). This is what lends a certain “abstractness” (and, indeed, coldness) to pure Ancient Greek sculpture, which Hegel would have known almost beauty (PKÄ, 57, 125). If art's role is to give sensuous expression to true exclusively from Roman copies or from plaster casts, presents what he freedom, however, it must move beyond abstraction towards concreteness. calls pure or “absolute” beauty (PKÄ, 124). It does not, however, exhaust This means that it must move beyond pure beauty to the more concrete the idea of beauty, for it does not give us beauty in its most concrete and and genuinely human beauty of drama. These two kinds of ideal beauty developed form. This we find in ancient Greek drama—especially tragedy thus constitute the most appropriate objects of art and, taken together, —in which free individuals proceed to action that leads to conflict and, form what Hegel calls the “centre” (Mittelpunkt) of art itself (PKÄ, 126).

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conceptions of spirit that underlie it—conceptions that are contained 6.2 The Particular Forms of Art above all in religion—are deficient (PKÄ, 68). Hegel also acknowledges that art can, indeed must, both fall short of and 6.2.1 Symbolic Art go beyond such ideal beauty. It falls short of ideal beauty when it takes the form of symbolic art, and it goes beyond such beauty when it takes Hegel's account of symbolic art encompasses the art of many different the form of romantic art. The form of art that is characterized by works of civilizations and shows his considerable understanding of, and ideal beauty itself is classical art. These are the three forms of art appreciation for, non-Western art. Not all of the types of symbolic art (Kunstformen), or “forms of the beautiful” (PKÄ, 68), that Hegel believes Hegel discusses, however, are fully and properly symbolic. So what are made necessary by the very idea of art itself. The development of art connects them all? The fact that they all belong to the sphere of what from one form to another generates what Hegel regards as the distinctive Hegel calls “pre-art” (Vorkunst) (PKÄ, 73). Art proper, for Hegel, is the history of art. sensuous expression or manifestation of free spirit in a medium (such as metal, stone or color) that has been deliberately shaped or worked by What produces these three art-forms is the changing relation between the human beings into the expression of freedom. The sphere of “pre-art” content of art—the Idea as spirit—and its mode of presentation. The comprises art that falls short of art proper in some way. This is either changes in this relation are in turn determined by the way in which the because it is the product of a spirit that does not yet understand itself to content of art is itself conceived. In symbolic art the content is conceived be truly free, or because it is the product of a spirit that does have a sense abstractly, such that it is not able to manifest itself adequately in a of its own freedom but does not yet understand such freedom to involve sensuous, visible form. In classical art, by contrast, the content is the manifestation of itself in a sensuous medium that has been specifically conceived in such a way that it is able to find perfect expression in shaped to that end. In either case, compared to genuine art, “pre-art” rests sensuous, visible form. In romantic art, the content is conceived in such a on a relatively abstract conception of spirit. way that it is able to find adequate expression in sensuous, visible form and yet also ultimately transcends the realm of the sensuous and visible. Hegel's intention in his account of symbolic art is not to comment exhaustively on every kind of “pre-art” there is. He says nothing, for Classical art is the home of ideal beauty proper, whereas romantic art is example, about prehistoric art (such as cave painting), nor does he discuss the home of what Hegel calls the “beauty of inwardness” (Schönheit der Chinese art or Buddhist art (even though he discusses both Chinese Innigkeit) or, as Knox translates it, “beauty of deep feeling” (Aesthetics, religion and Buddhism in his lectures on the philosophy of religion). 1: 531). Symbolic art, by contrast, falls short of genuine beauty Hegel's aim in his account of symbolic art is to examine the various kinds altogether. This does not mean that it is simply bad art: Hegel recognizes of art that are made necessary by the very concept of art itself, the stages that symbolic art is often the product of the highest level of artistry. through which art has to pass on its journey from pre-art to art proper. Symbolic art falls short of beauty because it does not yet have a rich enough understanding of the nature of divine and human spirit. The The first stage is that in which spirit is conceived as being in an artistic shapes it produces are deficient, therefore, because the immediate unity with nature. This stage is encountered in the ancient conceptions of spirit that underlie it—conceptions that are contained

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immediate unity with nature. This stage is encountered in the ancient nature. On the other hand, Hegel claims, the divine in Hinduism is Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. The Zoroastrians, Hegel claims, conceived in such an abstract and indeterminate way that it acquires believe in a divine power—the Good—but they identify this divinity with determinate form only in and through something immediately sensuous, an aspect of nature itself, namely with light. Light does not symbolize or external and natural. The divine is thus understood to be present in the point to a separate God or Good; rather, in Zoroastrianism (as Hegel very form of something sensuous and natural. As Hegel puts it in his understands it) light is the Good, is God (Aesthetics, 1: 325). Light is thus 1826 lectures on aesthetics: “natural objects—the human being, animals the substance in all things and that which gives life to all plants and —are revered as divine” (PKÄ, 79). animals. This light, Hegel tells us, is personified as Ormuzd (or Ahura Mazda). Unlike the God of the Jews, however, Ormuzd is not a free, self- Hindu art marks the difference between the spiritual (or divine) and the conscious subject. He (or it) is the Good in the form of light itself, and so merely natural by extending, exaggerating and distorting the natural forms is present in all sources of light, such as the sun, stars and fire. in which the divine is imagined to be present. The divine is portrayed not in the purely natural form of an animal or human being, therefore, but in The question we have to ask, Hegel remarks, is whether seeing the Good the unnaturally distorted form of an animal or human being. (Shiva is as light (or giving utterance to such an intuition) counts as art (PKÄ, 76). portrayed with many arms, for example, and Brahma with four faces.) In Hegel's view, it does not do so for two reasons: on the one hand, the Good is not understood to be free spirit that is distinct from, but manifests Hegel notes that such portrayal involves the work of “shaping” or itself in, the light; on the other hand, the sensuous element in which the “forming” the medium of expression (PKÄ, 78). In that sense, one can Good is present—the light itself—is understood not to be something speak of Hindu “art.” He claims, however, that Hindu art does not fulfill shaped or produced by free spirit for the purpose of its self-expression, the true purpose of art because it does not give appropriate and adequate but simply to be a given feature of nature with which the Good is shape to free spirit and thereby create images of beauty. Rather, it simply immediately identical. distorts the natural shape of animals and human beings—to the point at which they become “ugly” (unschön), “monstrous,” “grotesque” or In the Zoroastrian vision of the Good as light, we encounter the “sensuous “bizarre” (PKÄ, 78, 84)—in order to show that the divine or spiritual, presentation [Darstellung] of the divine” (PKÄ, 76). This vision, however, which cannot be understood except in terms of the natural and sensuous, does not constitute a work of art, even though it finds expression in well- is at the same time different from, and finds no adequate expression in, crafted prayers and utterances. the realm of the natural and sensuous. Hindu divinity is inseparable from natural forms, but it indicates its distinctive presence by the unnaturalness The second stage in the development of pre-art is that in which there is an of the natural forms it adopts. immediate difference between spirit and nature. This is found, in Hegel's view, in Hindu art. The difference between the spiritual and the natural Hegel's judgment on Hindu art does not mean, by the way, that he finds means that the spiritual—i.e., the divine—cannot be understood (as in no merit at all in such art. He remarks on the splendor of Hindu art and on Persia) to be simply identical with some immediately given aspect of the “most tender feeling” and the “wealth of the finest sensuous nature. On the other hand, Hegel claims, the divine in Hinduism is naturalness” that such art can display. He insists, however, that Hindu art

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naturalness” that such art can display. He insists, however, that Hindu art understood above all as the realm of the dead. fails to reach the height of art, in which spirit is shown to be free in itself and is given appropriate natural, visible shape (PKÄ, 84). The fact that death is the principal realm in which the independence of the soul is preserved explains why the doctrine of the immortality of the soul The third stage in the development of “pre-art” is that of genuinely is so important to the Egyptians. It also explains why Hegel sees the symbolic art in which shapes and images are deliberately designed and pyramid as the image that epitomizes Egyptian symbolic art. The pyramid created to point to a determinate and quite separate sphere of “interiority” is a created shape that hides within it something separate from it, namely (Innerlichkeit) (PKÄ, 86). This is the province of ancient Egyptian art. a dead body. It thus serves as the perfect image of Egyptian symbols The Egyptians, Hegel tells us, were the first people to “fix” (fixieren) the which point to, but do not themselves reveal and express, a realm of idea of spirit as something inward that is separate and independent in interiority that is independent but still lacks the freedom and life of itself (PKÄ, 85). (In this context he refers to Herodotus, who maintained genuine spirit (Aesthetics, 1: 356). that the Egyptians were “the first people to put forward the doctrine of the immortality of the soul” [Herodotus, 145 [2: 123]].) Spirit, as Hegel For Hegel, Greek art contains symbolic elements (such as the eagle to understands it (in his philosophy of subjective and objective spirit), is the symbolize the power of Zeus), but the core of Greek art is not the symbol. activity of externalizing and expressing itself in images, words, actions Egyptian art, by contrast, is symbolic through and through. Indeed, and institutions. With the idea of spirit as “interiority,” therefore, there Egyptian consciousness as a whole, in Hegel's view, is essentially necessarily comes the drive to give an external shape to this inner spirit, symbolic. Animals, for example, are regarded as symbols or masks of that is, to produce a shape for spirit from out of spirit itself. The drive to something deeper, and so animal faces are often used as masks (by create shapes and images—works of art—through which the inner realm amongst others, embalmers). Symbolism can also be multi-layered: the can make itself known is thus an “instinct” in the Egyptians that is deeply image of the phoenix, Hegel claims, symbolizes natural (especially, rooted in the way they understand spirit. In this sense, in Hegel's view, celestial) processes of disappearance and reemergence, but those Egyptian civilization is a more profoundly artistic civilization than that of processes are themselves viewed as symbols of spiritual rebirth (PKÄ, the Hindus (Aesthetics, 1: 354; PKÄ, 86). 87).

Egyptian art, however, is only symbolic art, not art in its full sense. This As noted above, the pyramid epitomizes the symbolic art of the is because the created shapes and images of Egyptian art do not give Egyptians. Such art, however, does not just point symbolically to the direct, adequate expression to spirit, but merely point to, or symbolize, an realm of the dead; it also bears witness to an incipient but still interiority that remains hidden from view. Furthermore, the inner spirit, undeveloped awareness that true inwardness is found in the living human though fixed in the Egyptian understanding as a “separate, independent spirit. It does so, Hegel maintains, by showing the human spirit struggling inwardness” (PKÄ, 86), is not itself understood as fully free spirit. Indeed, to emerge from the animal. The image that best depicts this emergence is, the realm of spirit is understood by the Egyptians to a large degree as the of course, that of the sphinx (which has the body of a lion and the head of simple negation of the realm of nature and life. That is to say, it is a human being). The human form is also mixed with that of animals in understood above all as the realm of the dead. images of gods, such as Horus (who has a human body and a falcon's

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images of gods, such as Horus (who has a human body and a falcon's created to serve God (PKÄ, 90). head). Such images, however, do not constitute art in the full sense because they fail to give adequate expression to free spirit in the form of Judaic spirituality, in Hegel's view, is not capable of producing works of the fully human being. They are mere symbols that partially disclose an true beauty because the Jewish God transcends the world of nature and interiority whose true character remains hidden from view (and finitude and cannot manifest itself in that world and be given visible shape mysterious even to the Egyptians themselves). in it. Jewish poetry (the Psalms) gives expression, rather, to the sublimity of God by praising and exalting Him as the source of all things. At the Even when the human form is depicted in Egyptian art without same time, such poetry gives “brilliant” (glänzend) expression to the pain adulteration, it is still not animated by a genuinely free and living spirit and fear felt by the sinful in relation to their Lord (PKÄ, 91). and so does not become the shape of freedom itself. Figures, such as the Memnon Colossi of Amenhotep III in Western Thebes, display no The second sub-division of this fourth stage of pre-art comprises what “freedom of movement” (PKÄ, 89), in Hegel's view, and other smaller Hegel calls “oriental pantheism” and is found in the poetry of Islamic figures, which stand with their arms pressed to their sides and their feet “Arabs, Persians, and Turks” (PKÄ, 93), such as the Persian lyric poet firmly planted on the ground, lack “grace [Grazie] of movement.” Hafez (German: Hafis) (c. 1310–1389). In such pantheism, God is also Egyptian sculpture is praised by Hegel as “worthy of admiration”; indeed, understood to stand sublimely above and apart from the realm of the finite he claims that under the Ptolemies (305–30 B.C.) Egyptian sculpture and natural, but his relation to that realm is held to be affirmative, rather exhibited great “delicacy” (or “elegance”) (Zierlichkeit). Nonetheless, for than negative. The divine raises things to their own magnificence, fills all its merits, Egyptian art does not give shape to real freedom and life them with spirit, gives them life and in this sense is actually immanent in and so fails to fulfill the true purpose of art. things (Aesthetics, 1: 368; PKÄ, 93).

The fourth stage of pre-art is that in which spirit gains such a degree of This in turn determines the relation that the poet has to objects. For the freedom and independence that spirit and nature “fall apart” (PKÄ, 89). poet, too, is free and independent of things, but also has an affirmative This stage is in turn sub-divided into three. The first sub-division relation to them. That is to say, he feels an identity with things and sees comprises sublime art: the poetic art of the Jewish people. his own untroubled freedom reflected in them. Such pantheism thus comes close to genuine art, for it uses natural objects, such as a rose, as In Judaism, Hegel maintains, spirit is understood to be fully free and poetic “images” (Bilder) of its own feeling of “cheerful, blessed independent. This freedom and independence is, however, attributed to inwardness” (PKÄ, 94). The pantheistic spirit remains, however, free the divine rather than the human spirit. God is thus conceived as a “free within itself in distinction from and in relation to natural objects; it does spiritual subject” (PKÄ, 75), who is the creator of the world and the not create shapes of its own—such as the idealized figures of the Greek power over everything natural and finite. That which is natural and finite gods—in which its freedom comes directly into view. is, by contrast, regarded as something “negative” in relation to God, that is, as something that does not exist for its own sake but that has been The third sub-division of the fourth stage of pre-art is that in which there created to serve God (PKÄ, 90). is the clearest break between spirit and the realm of the natural or sensuous. At this stage, the spiritual aspect—that which is inner and, as it

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sensuous. At this stage, the spiritual aspect—that which is inner and, as it immediate difference between the spiritual (the divine) and nature, but the were, invisible—takes the form of something quite separate and distinct. spiritual remains abstract and indeterminate in itself and so can be brought It is also something finite and limited: an idea or meaning entertained by to mind only through images of natural things (unnaturally distorted). In human beings. The sensuous element is in turn something separate and Egyptian art, the spiritual is again different from the realm of the merely distinct from the meaning. It has no intrinsic connection to the meaning, natural and sensuous. In contrast to the indeterminate divinity of the but is, as Hegel puts it, “external” to that meaning. The sensuous element Hindus, however, Egyptian spirituality (in the form of the gods and of the —the pictorial or poetic image—is thus connected with the meaning by human soul) is fixed, separate and determinate in itself. The images of nothing but the subjective “wit” or imagination of the poet (PKÄ, 95). Egyptian art thus point symbolically to a realm of spirit that remains This occurs, Hegel maintains, in fables, parables, allegories, metaphors hidden from direct view. The spirit to which such symbolic images point, and similes. however, lacks genuine freedom and life and is often identified with the realm of the dead. This third sub-division is not associated with any particular civilization, but is a form of expression that is found in many different ones. Hegel In the sublime poetry of the Jews, God is represented as transcendent and contends, however, that allegory, metaphor and simile do not constitute as a “free spiritual subject.” Finite human beings, however, are portrayed the core of truly beautiful art, because they do not present us with the in a negative relation to God in that they are created to serve and praise very freedom of spirit itself, but point to (and so symbolize) a meaning God and are pained by their own sinfulness. In the sublime poetry of that is separate and independent. A metaphor, such as “Achilles is a lion,” “oriental pantheism” God is once again portrayed as transcendent, but, in does not embody the spirit of the individual hero in the way that a Greek contrast to Judaism, God and finite things are shown to stand in an sculpture does, but is a metaphor for something that is distinct from the affirmative relation to one another: things are infused with spirit and life metaphor itself (see Aesthetics, 1: 402–8; PKÄ, 104). by God. The poet's relation to things is, accordingly, one in which his own free spirit finds itself reflected in the natural things around him. Hegel's account of symbolic art (or “pre-art”) draws widely on the work of other writers, such as his former colleague at Heidelberg, Georg In the last stage of pre-art, the difference between the spiritual and the Friedrich Creuzer, the author of Symbolism and Mythology of Ancient natural (or sensuous) is taken to its limit: the spiritual element (the Peoples, especially the Greeks (1810–12). Hegel's account is not meant to “meaning”) and the sensuous element (the “shape” or “image”) are now be strictly historical, but rather to place the various forms of pre-art completely independent of, and external to, one another. Furthermore, discussed in a logical relation to one another. This relation is determined each is finite and limited. This is the realm of allegory and metaphor. by the degree to which, in each form of pre-art, spirit and nature (or the sensuous) are differentiated from one another. 6.2.2 Classical Art

To recapitulate: in Zoroastrianism, spirit and nature are in immediate Hegel does not deny the magnificence or elegance of pre-art, but he identity with one another (as the Light). In Hindu art, there is an maintains that it falls short of art proper. The latter is found in classical immediate difference between the spiritual (the divine) and nature, but the art, or the art of the ancient Greeks.

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art, or the art of the ancient Greeks. conceived, in other words, not as sublimely transcendent, but as spirituality that is embodied in many different ways. The beauty of Greek Classical art, Hegel contends, fulfills the concept of art in that it is the art thus presupposed Greek polytheism. Third, the proper shape of free perfect sensuous expression of the freedom of spirit. It is in classical art, spirit had to be recognized to be the human body, not that of an animal. therefore—above all in ancient Greek sculpture (and drama)—that true Hindu and Egyptian gods were often portrayed as a fusion of human and beauty is to be found. Indeed, Hegel maintains, the gods of ancient animal forms; by contrast, the principal Greek gods were depicted in ideal Greece exhibit “absolute beauty as such”: “there can be nothing more human form. Hegel notes that Zeus would sometimes take on animal beautiful than the classical; there is the ideal” (PKÄ, 124, 135; see also form, for example when he was engaged in seduction; but he sees Zeus' Aesthetics, 1: 427). transformation of himself into a bull for the purpose of seduction as a lingering echo of Egyptian mythology in the Greek world (see PKÄ, 119– Such beauty consists in the perfect fusion of the spiritual and the sensuous 20, in which Hegel confuses Io, who was herself changed into a white (or natural). In true beauty the visible shape before us does not merely cow by Hera in another story, with Europa, who was the object of Zeus' intimate the presence of the divine through the unnatural distortion of its love in the story Hegel has in mind). form, nor does it point beyond itself to a hidden spirituality or to divine transcendence. Rather, the shape manifests and embodies free spirituality Not only do Greek art and beauty presuppose Greek religion and in its very contours. In true beauty, therefore, the visible shape is not a mythology, but Greek religion itself requires art in order to give a symbol of, or metaphor for, a meaning that lies beyond the shape, but is determinate identity to the gods. As Hegel notes (following Herodotus), it the expression of spirit's freedom that brings that freedom directly into was the poets Homer and Hesiod who gave the Greeks their gods, and view. Beauty is sensuous, visible shape so transformed that it stands as Greek understanding of the gods was developed and expressed above all the visible embodiment of freedom itself. in their sculpture and drama (rather than in distinctively theological writings) (PKÄ, 123–4). Greek religion thus took the form of what Hegel Hegel does not deny that Greek art and mythology contain many symbolic in the Phenomenology called a “religion of art.” Moreover, Greek art elements: the story, for example, that Cronus, the father of Zeus, achieved the highest degree of beauty, in Hegel's view, precisely because consumed his own children symbolizes the destructive power of time it was the highest expression of the freedom of spirit enshrined in Greek (Aesthetics, 1: 492; PKÄ, 120). In Hegel's view, however, the distinctive religion. core of Greek art consists in works of ideal beauty in which the freedom of spirit is made visible for the first time in history. Three conditions had Although Greek sculpture and drama achieved unsurpassed heights of to be met for such beautiful art to be produced. beauty, such art did not give expression to the deepest freedom of the spirit. This is because of a deficiency in the Greek conception of divine First, the divine had to be understood to be freely self-determining spirit, and human freedom. Greek religion was so well suited to aesthetic to be divine subjectivity (not just an abstract power such as the Light). expression because the gods were conceived as free individuals who were Second, the divine had to be understood to take the form of individuals wholly at one with their bodies and their sensuous life. In other words, who could be portrayed in sculpture and drama. The divine had to be they were free spirits still immersed in nature (PKÄ, 132–3). In Hegel's conceived, in other words, not as sublimely transcendent, but as

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they were free spirits still immersed in nature (PKÄ, 132–3). In Hegel's “die” to ourselves and let go of what is most precious to us. Much view, however, a deeper freedom is attained when the spirit withdraws religious romantic art, therefore, focuses on the suffering and death of into itself out of nature and becomes pure self-knowing interiority. Such Christ. an understanding of spirit is expressed, according to Hegel, in Christianity. The Christian God is thus pure self-knowing spirit and love Hegel notes that it is not appropriate in romantic art to depict Christ with who created human beings so that they, too, may become such pure spirit the idealized body of a Greek god or hero, because what is central to and love. With the emergence of Christianity comes a new form of art: Christ is his irreducible humanity and mortality. Romantic art, therefore, romantic art. Hegel uses the term “romantic” to refer not to the art of the breaks with the classical ideal of beauty and incorporates real human late 18th- and early 19th-century German Romantics (many of whom he frailty, pain and suffering into its images of Christ (and also of religious knew personally), but to the whole tradition of art that emerged in martyrs). Indeed, such art can even go to the point of being “ugly” Western Christendom. (unschön) in its depiction of suffering (PKÄ, 136). If, however, romantic art is to fulfill the purpose of art and present true 6.2.3 Romantic Art freedom of spirit in the form of beauty, it must show the suffering Christ Romantic art, like classical art, is the sensuous expression or or suffering martyrs to be imbued with a profound inwardness (Innigkeit) manifestation of the freedom of spirit. It is thus capable of genuine of feeling and a genuine sense of reconciliation (Versöhnung) (PKÄ, 136– beauty. The freedom it manifests, however, is a profoundly inward 7): for such an inward sense of reconciliation, in Hegel's view, is the freedom that finds its highest expression and articulation not in art itself deepest spiritual freedom. The sensuous expression (in color or words) of but in religious faith and philosophy. Unlike classical art, therefore, this inner sense of reconciliation constitutes what Hegel calls the “beauty romantic art gives expression to a freedom of the spirit whose true home of inwardness” or “spiritual beauty” (geistige Schönheit) (PKÄ, 137). lies beyond art. If classical art can be compared to the human body which Strictly speaking, such spiritual beauty is not as consummately beautiful is thoroughly suffused with spirit and life, romantic art can be compared as classical beauty, in which the spirit and the body are perfectly fused to the human face which discloses the spirit and personality within. Since with one another. Spiritual beauty, however, is the product of, and romantic art actually discloses the inner spirit, however, rather than reveals, a much more profound inner freedom of spirit than classical merely pointing to it, it differs from symbolic art which it otherwise beauty and so moves and engages us much more readily than do the resembles. relatively cold statues of Greek gods.

Romantic art, for Hegel, takes three basic forms. The first is that of The most profound spiritual beauty in the visual arts is found, in Hegel's explicitly religious art. It is in Christianity, Hegel contends, that the true view, in painted images of the Madonna and Child, for in these what is nature of spirit is revealed. What is represented in the story of Christ's expressed is the feeling of boundless love. Hegel had a special affection life, death and resurrection is the idea that a truly divine life of freedom for the paintings of the Flemish Primitives, Jan van Eyck and Hans and love is at the same time a fully human life in which we are willing to Memling, whose work he saw on his visits to Ghent and Bruges in 1827 “die” to ourselves and let go of what is most precious to us. Much (Hegel: The Letters, 661–2), but he also held Raphael in high regard and

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(Hegel: The Letters, 661–2), but he also held Raphael in high regard and and independence of character. Such freedom is not associated with any was particularly moved by the expression of “pious, modest mother-love” ethical principles or, indeed, with any of the formal virtues just in Raphael's Sistine Madonna which he saw in Dresden in 1820 (PKÄ, 39; mentioned, but consists simply in the “firmness” (Festigkeit) of character Pöggeler et al 1981, 142). Greek sculptors portrayed Niobe as simply (Aesthetics, 1: 577; PKÄ, 145–6). This is freedom in its modern, secular “petrified in her pain” at the loss of her children. By contrast, the painted form. It is displayed most magnificently, Hegel believes, by characters, images of the Virgin Mary are imbued by van Eyck and Raphael with an such as Richard III, Othello and Macbeth, in the plays of Shakespeare. “eternal love” and a “soulfulness” that Greek statues can never match Note that what interests us about such individuals is not any moral (PKÄ, 142, 184). purpose that they may have, but simply the energy and self-determination (and often ruthlessness) that they exhibit. Such characters must have an The second fundamental form of romantic art identified by Hegel depicts internal richness (revealed through imagination and language) and not just what he calls the secular “virtues” of the free spirit (Aesthetics, 1: 553; be one-dimensional, but their main appeal is their formal freedom to PKÄ, 135). These are not the ethical virtues displayed by the heroes and commit themselves to a course of action, even at the cost of their own heroines of Greek tragedy: they do not involve a commitment to the lives. These characters do not constitute moral or political ideals, but they necessary institutions of freedom, such as the family or the state. Rather, are the appropriate objects of modern, romantic art whose task is to they are the formal virtues of the romantic hero: that is to say, they depict freedom even in its most secular and amoral forms. involve a commitment by the free individual to an object or person determined by the individual's contingent choice or passion. Hegel also sees romantic beauty in more inwardly sensitive characters, such as Shakespeare's Juliet. After meeting Romeo, Hegel remarks, Juliet Such virtues include that of romantic love (which concentrates on a suddenly opens up with love like a rosebud, full of childlike naivety. Her particular, contingent person), loyalty towards an individual (that can beauty thus lies in being the embodiment of love. Hamlet is a somewhat change if it is to one's advantage to do so), and courage (which is often similar character: far from being simply weak (as Goethe thought), displayed in the pursuit of personal ends, such as rescuing a damsel in Hamlet, in Hegel's view, displays the inner beauty of a profoundly noble distress, but can also be displayed in the pursuit of quasi-religious ends, soul (Aesthetics, 1: 583; PKÄ, 147–8). such as the hunt for the Holy Grail) (PKÄ, 143–4). 6.2.4 The “End” of Art Such virtues are found primarily in the world of mediaeval chivalry (and are subjected to ridicule, Hegel points out, in Cervantes' Don Quixote) One should note that the development of romantic art, as Hegel describes (Aesthetics, 1: 591–2; PKÄ, 150). They can, however, also crop up in it, involves the increasing secularization and humanization of art. In the more modern works and, indeed, are precisely the virtues displayed in an Middle Ages and the Renaissance (as in ancient Greece) art was closely art-form of which Hegel could know nothing, namely the American tied to religion: art's function was to a large degree to make the divine Western. visible. With the Reformation, however, religion turned inward and found God to be present in faith alone, not in the icons and images of art. As a The third fundamental form of romantic art depicts the formal freedom result, Hegel points out, we who live after the Reformation “no longer and independence of character. Such freedom is not associated with any

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result, Hegel points out, we who live after the Reformation “no longer least should play) a more limited role now than it did in ancient Greece or venerate works of art” (VPK, 6). Furthermore, art itself was released from in the Middle Ages. Yet Hegel does think that art in modernity comes to its close ties to religion and allowed to become fully secular. “To an end in a certain respect. To understand why he thinks this, we need to Protestantism alone,” Hegel states, “the important thing is to get a sure consider his claim that art in modernity “falls apart” (zerfällt) into the footing in the prose of life, to make it absolutely valid in itself exploration of everyday contingencies, on the one hand, and the independently of religious associations, and to let it develop in celebration of witty, “humorous” subjectivity, on the other (PKÄ, 151). unrestricted freedom” (Aesthetics, 1: 598). In Hegel's view, much painting and poetry after the Reformation focuses It is for this reason, in Hegel's view, that art in the modern age no longer its attention on the prosaic details of ordinary daily life, rather than on the meets our highest needs and no longer affords us the satisfaction that it intimacy of religious love or the magnificent resolve and energy of tragic gave to earlier cultures and civilizations. Art satisfied our highest needs heroes. To the extent that such works of art no longer aim to give when it formed an integral part of our religious life and revealed to us the expression to divine or human freedom but seek (apparently at least) to do nature of the divine (and, as in Greece, the true character of our no more than “imitate nature,” they prompt Hegel to consider whether fundamental ethical obligations). In the modern, post-Reformation world, they still count as “art works” in the strictly philosophical (as opposed to however, art has been released (or has emancipated itself) from the more generally accepted) sense of the term. In the twentieth century it subservience to religion. As a result, “art, considered in its highest is the abstract creations of, for example, Jackson Pollock or Carl André vocation, is and remains for us a thing of the past” (Aesthetics, 1: 11). that usually provoke the question: “is this art?”. In Hegel's mind, however, it is works that appear to be purely naturalistic and This does not mean that art now has no role to play and that it provides no “representational” that raise this question. His view is that such works satisfaction at all. Art is no longer the highest and most adequate way of count as genuine works of art only when they do more than merely expressing the truth (as it was, according to Hegel, in fifth-century imitate nature. The naturalistic and prosaic works that best meet this Athens); we moderns now seek ultimate or “absolute” truth in religious criterion, he maintains, are the paintings of the sixteenth- and faith or in philosophy, rather than in art. (Indeed, the considerable seventeenth-century Dutch masters. importance we assign to philosophy is evident, in Hegel's view, in the prominence of the philosophical study of art itself in modernity In such works, Hegel claims, the painter does not aim simply to show us [Aesthetics, 1: 11; VPK, 6].) Yet art in modernity continues to perform what grapes, flowers or trees look like: we know that already from nature. the significant function of giving visible and audible expression to our The painter aims, rather, to capture the—often fleeting—“life” distinctively human freedom and to our understanding of ourselves in all (Lebendigkeit) of things: “the lustre of metal, the shimmer of a bunch of our finite humanity. grapes by candlelight, a vanishing glimpse of the moon or the sun, a smile, the expression of a swiftly passing emotion” (Aesthetics, 1: 599). Hegel does not claim, therefore, that art as a whole simply comes to an Often, indeed, the painter seeks to delight us specifically with the end or “dies” in the modern age. His view is, rather, that art plays (or at animated play of the colors of gold, silver, velvet or fur. In such works, least should play) a more limited role now than it did in ancient Greece or Hegel notes, we encounter not just the depiction of things, but “as it were,

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Hegel notes, we encounter not just the depiction of things, but “as it were, objective and win a firm shape for itself in reality” (Aesthetics, 1: 601). an objective music, a peal in colour [ein Tönen in Farben]” (Aesthetics, 1: 598–600). To the extent that works of humor do not give body to true self- determining freedom and life—or afford “the supreme idea of depth”— A genuine work of art is the sensuous expression of divine or human but merely manifest the power of arbitrary, subjective wit to subvert the freedom and life. Paintings that are no more than prosaic, naturalistic settled order, such works, in Hegel's view, no longer count as genuine depictions of everyday objects or human activity would thus appear to fall works of art. Consequently, “when the subject lets itself go in this way, short of genuine art. Dutch artists, however, turn such depictions into true art thereby comes to an end [so hört damit die Kunst auf]” (PKÄ, 153). In works of art precisely by imbuing objects with “the fullness of life.” In so this respect, Hegel does after all proclaim that art comes to an end in doing, Hegel claims, they give expression to their own sense of freedom, modernity. This is not because art no longer performs a religious function “comfort” and “contentment” and their own exuberant subjective skill and so no longer fulfills the highest vocation of art; it is because there (Aesthetics, 1: 599; PKÄ, 152). The paintings of such artists may lack the emerge in modernity certain “art works” that are no longer the classical beauty of Greek art, but they exhibit magnificently the subtle expressions of true human freedom and life and so no longer genuine art beauties and delights of everyday modern life. works at all.

A much more overt expression of subjectivity is found by Hegel in works As was noted above, however, this does not mean that art as a whole of modern humor. Such witty, ironic, humorous subjectivity—one we comes to an end in the early nineteenth century. Art, in Hegel's view, still might now describe as “anarchic”—manifests itself in playing or has a future: “we may well hope,” he says, “that art will always rise “sporting” with objects, “deranging” and “perverting” material and higher and come to perfection” (Aesthetics, 1: 103). For Hegel, the “rambling to and fro,” and in the “criss-cross movement of subjective distinctive character of genuine art in contemporary (and future) expressions, views, and attitudes whereby the author sacrifices himself modernity—and thus of genuinely modern art—is twofold. On the one and his topics alike” (Aesthetics, 1: 601). Hegel claims that works of “true hand, it remains bound to give expression to concrete human life and humour,” such as Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759), succeed in freedom; on the other hand, it is no longer restricted to any of the three making “what is substantial emerge out of contingency.” Their “triviality art-forms. That is to say, it does not have to observe the proprieties of [thus] affords precisely the supreme idea of depth” (Aesthetics, 1: 602). In classical art or explore the intense emotional inwardness or heroic other works, by contrast—such as those of Hegel's contemporary, Jean freedom or comfortable ordinariness that we find in romantic art. Modern Paul Richter—all we encounter is the “baroque mustering of things art, for Hegel, can draw on features of any of the art-forms (including objectively furthest removed from one another” and “the most confused symbolic art) in its presentation of human life. Indeed, it can also present disorderly jumbling of topics related only in his own subjective human life and freedom indirectly through the depiction of nature. imagination” (Aesthetics, 1: 601). In such works, we do not see human freedom giving itself objective expression, but rather witness subjectivity The focus of modern art, therefore, does not have to be on one particular “destroying and dissolving everything that proposes to make itself conception of human freedom rather than another. The new “holy of objective and win a firm shape for itself in reality” (Aesthetics, 1: 601). holies” in art is humanity itself— “Humanus”—that is, “the depths and

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holies” in art is humanity itself— “Humanus”—that is, “the depths and yet they did so not in the abstract but in the very depiction of concrete, heights of the human heart as such, mankind in its joys and sorrows, its identifiable objects. (Robert Pippin takes a different view on this last strivings, deeds, and fates” (Aesthetics, 1: 607). Modern art, in Hegel's point; see Pippin 2007.) view, thus enjoys an unprecedented freedom to explore “the infinity of the human heart” in manifold different ways (VÄ, 181). For this reason, there From a twentieth- or twenty-first-century point of view, Hegel's stance is little that Hegel can say about the path that art should take in the future; may well look conservative. From his point of view, however, he was that is for artists to decide. trying to understand what conditions would have to be met for works of art to be genuine works of art and genuinely modern. The conditions that Hegel's judgment that modern artists are—and are quite rightly—free to Hegel identified—namely that art should present the richness of human adopt whatever style they please has surely been confirmed by the history freedom and life and should allow us to feel at home in its depictions— of art since Hegel's death in 1831. There is reason to suspect, however, are ones that many modern artists (for example, Impressionists such as that Hegel might not have welcomed many of the developments in post- Monet, Sisley and Pissarro) have felt no trouble in meeting. For others, Hegelian art. This is due to the fact that, although he does not lay down these conditions are simply too restrictive. They have thus taken modern any rules that are to govern modern art, he does identify certain art in a direction in which, from a Hegelian perspective, it has ceased to conditions that should be met if modern art is to be genuine art. Hegel be art in the true sense any longer. notes, for example, that such art should “not contradict the formal law of being simply beautiful and capable of artistic treatment” (Aesthetics, 1: 6.3 The System of the Individual Arts 605; VPK, 204). He insists that modern artists should draw their content Art, in Hegel's account, not only undergoes a historical development from their own human spirit and that “nothing that can be living (from symbolic art through classical art to romantic and then modern art), [lebendig] in the human breast is alien to that spirit.” He also remarks that but also differentiates itself into different arts. Each art has a distinctive modern art may represent “everything in which the human being as such character and exhibits a certain affinity with one or more of the art-forms. is capable of being at home [heimisch]” (Aesthetics, 1: 607). These may Hegel does not provide an exhaustive account of all recognized arts (he appear to be fairly innocuous conditions, but they suggest that certain says little, for example, about dance and nothing, obviously, about post-Hegelian art works would not count in Hegel's eyes as genuine cinema), but he examines the five arts that he thinks are made necessary works of art. These might include works that by no stretch of the by the very concept of art itself. imagination can be called “beautiful” (such as some of the paintings of Willem De Kooning or Francis Bacon), or works in which it is evidently 6.3.1 Architecture hard to feel very much “at home” (such as the writings of Franz Kafka). Hegel's account of the different arts (such as sculpture and painting) also Art, we recall, is the sensuous expression of divine and human freedom. suggests that he would not have regarded the move from figurative to If it is to demonstrate that spirit is indeed free, it must show that spirit is abstract visual art as appropriate: Netherlandish and Dutch painters free in relation to that which is itself unfree, spiritless and lifeless—that excelled in the creating of “objective music” through the play of colors, is, three-dimensional, inorganic matter, weighed down by gravity. Art yet they did so not in the abstract but in the very depiction of concrete,

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is, three-dimensional, inorganic matter, weighed down by gravity. Art (Aesthetics, 2: 641); and some even have a human form, albeit one that is must, therefore, be the transformation of such brute, heavy matter into the abstract and colossal (such as the Egyptian Memnons of Amenhotep III). expression of spiritual freedom, or what Hegel calls “the forming of the In Hegel's view, however, all such constructions have a symbolic inorganic” (VPK, 209). The art that gives heavy matter the explicit form significance for those who built them. They were not built simply to of spiritual freedom—and so works stone and metal into the shape of a provide shelter or security for people (like a house or a castle), but are human being or a god—is sculpture. Architecture, by contrast, gives works of symbolic art. matter an abstract, inorganic form created by human understanding. It does not animate matter in the manner of sculpture but invests matter These “independent” constructions are meaningful in themselves: their with strict regularity, symmetry and harmony (PKÄ, 155, 166). In so meaning lies, for example, in their shape or in the number of their parts. doing architecture turns matter not into the direct sensuous expression of By contrast, the Egyptian pyramids contain a “meaning” that is separate spiritual freedom, but into an artificially and artfully shaped surrounding from the construction itself. That “meaning,” of course, is the body of the for the direct expression of spiritual freedom in sculpture. The art of dead pharaoh. Since they house within themselves something other than architecture fulfills its purpose, therefore, when it creates classical themselves, pyramids, in Hegel's view, are, as it were, on the way to temples to house statues of the gods (VPK, 221). being properly architectural. They fall short of proper classical architecture, however, because what they shelter within themselves is Hegel points out, however, that prior to the emergence of classical death, not the embodiment of the living god: they are, as Hegel puts it, architecture in ancient Greece, architecture took the more primitive form “crystals that shelter within them a departed spirit” (VPK, 218). of “independent” (selbständig) or “symbolic” architecture (Aesthetics, 2: Furthermore, the “meaning” that they contain is completely hidden within 635; PKÄ, 159). The constructions that fall into this category do not house them, invisible to all. Pyramids thus remain works of symbolic art that or surround individual sculptures, like classical Greek temples, but are point to a hidden meaning buried within them. Indeed, as was noted themselves partly sculptural and partly architectural. They are works of above, Hegel claims that the pyramid is the image or symbol of symbolic architectural sculpture or sculptural architecture. Such constructions are art itself (Aesthetics, 1: 356). sculptural in so far as they are built for their own sake and do not serve to shelter or enclose something else. They are works of architecture, The epitome of symbolic art is symbolic architecture (specifically, the however, in so far as they are overtly heavy and massive and lack the pyramids). Architecture itself, however, comes into its own only with the animation of sculpture. They are also sometimes arranged in rows, like emergence of classical art: for it is only in the classical period that columns, with no distinctive individuality. architecture provides the surrounding for, and so becomes the servant of, a sculpture that is itself the embodiment of free spirit. Some of these works of independent architecture have regular inorganic, geometrical shapes (such as the temple of Bel described by Herodotus) Hegel has much to say about the proper form of such a surrounding. The (see Herodotus, 79–80 [1: 181]); some are clearly embodiments of the main point is this: spiritual freedom is embodied in the sculpture of the organic “force of life in nature” (such as the phallus and the lingam) god; the house of the god—the temple—is something quite distinct from, (Aesthetics, 2: 641); and some even have a human form, albeit one that is and subordinate to, the sculpture it surrounds; the form of that temple

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and subordinate to, the sculpture it surrounds; the form of that temple come to a definite end (in a capital on which rests the architrave of the should thus also be quite distinct from that of the sculpture. The temple, classical temple), but continue up until they meet to form a pointed arch therefore, should not mimic the flowing contours of the human body, but or a vaulted roof. In this way, the Gothic cathedral not only shelters the should be governed by the abstract principles of regularity, symmetry and spirit of the religious community, but also symbolizes the upward harmony. movement of that spirit in its very structure (PKÄ, 170–1).

Hegel also insists that the form of the temple should be determined by the Hegel considers a relatively small range of buildings: he says almost purpose it serves: namely to provide an enclosure and protection for the nothing, for example, about secular buildings. One should bear in mind, god (VPK, 221). This means that the basic shape of the temple should however, that he is interested in architecture only in so far as it is an art, contain only those features that are needed to fulfill its purpose. not in so far as it provides us with protection and security in our everyday Furthermore, it means (in Hegel's view) that each part of the temple lives. Yet it should also be noted that architecture, as Hegel describes it, should perform a specific function within the economy of the whole falls short of genuine art, as he defines it, since it is never the direct building and that different functions should not be confused with one sensuous expression of spiritual freedom itself (in the manner of another. It is this latter requirement that makes columns necessary. There sculpture) (see Aesthetics, 2: 888). This is a fundamental limitation of is a difference, for Hegel, between the task of bearing the roof and that of architecture: the structures of “independent architecture” symbolize enclosing the statue within a given space. The second task—that of meanings that are more or less indeterminate; the pyramids indicate the enclosure—is performed by a wall. If the first task is to be clearly presence of a hidden meaning, namely death; and even in its classical and distinguished from the second, therefore, it must be performed not by a romantic forms architecture remains a “symbolic” art, in so far as the wall but by a separate feature of the temple. Columns are necessary in a structures it creates remain separate from the spirit they house (Aesthetics, classical temple, according to Hegel, because they perform the distinct 2: 888). In no case is architecture the explicit manifestation or task of bearing the roof without forming a wall. The classical temple is embodiment of free spirituality itself. This does not, however, make thus the most intelligible of buildings because different functions are architecture any less necessary as a part of our aesthetic and religious life. carried out in this way by different architectural features and yet are Nor does it prevent Hegel from seeking to understand what distinguishes harmonized with one another. Herein, indeed, lies the beauty of such a the “art” of architecture (as opposed to the more everyday practice or temple (VPK, 221, 224). business of architecture) in both the classical and romantic eras.

In contrast to classical architecture, romantic or “Gothic” architecture is 6.3.2 Sculpture based on the idea of a closed house in which Christian inwardness can find refuge from the outside world. In the Gothic cathedral columns are In contrast to architecture, sculpture works heavy matter into the concrete located within, rather than around the outside of, the enclosed space, and expression of spiritual freedom by giving it the shape of the human being. their overt function is no longer merely to bear weight but to draw the The high point of sculpture, for Hegel, was achieved in classical Greece. soul up into the heavens. Consequently, the columns or pillars do not In Egyptian sculpture the figures often stand firm with one foot placed come to a definite end (in a capital on which rests the architrave of the before the other and the arms held tightly by the side of the body, giving

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before the other and the arms held tightly by the side of the body, giving of spirit in which the soul within manifests itself as the soul within (PKÄ, the figures a rather rigid, lifeless appearance. By contrast, the idealized 183). statues of the gods created by Greek sculptors, such as Phidias and Praxiteles, are clearly alive and animated, even when the gods are Painting, however, is also able—unlike sculpture—to set divine and depicted at rest. This animation is apparent in the posture of the figure, in human spirit in relation to its external environment: it is able to include the nuanced contours of the body and also in the free fall of the figure's within the painted image itself the natural landscape and the architecture garments. Hegel greatly admired the sculpture of Michelangelo—a cast of by which Christ, the Virgin Mary, the saints or secular figures are whose Pietà he saw in Berlin (Aesthetics, 2: 790)—but it was the Greeks, surrounded (Aesthetics, 2: 854). Indeed, Hegel argues that painting—in in his view, who set the standard for “ideal” sculptural beauty. Indeed, contrast to sculpture, which excels in presenting independent, free- Greek sculpture, according to Hegel, embodies the purest beauty of which standing individuals—is altogether more suited to showing human beings art itself is capable. (For a more detailed study of Hegel's account of in their relations both to their environment and to one another: hence the sculpture, see Houlgate 2007, 56–89). prominence in painting of, for example, depictions of the love between the Virgin Mary and the Christ child. 6.3.3 Painting Hegel's account of painting is extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging. He Hegel was well aware that Greek statues were often painted in quite a has particular praise for Raphael, Titian and the Dutch masters and, as gaudy manner. He claims, however, that sculpture expresses spiritual noted earlier, is especially interested in the ways in which painters can freedom and vitality in the three-dimensional shape of the figure, rather combine colors to create what he calls “objective music” (Aesthetics, 1: than in the color that has been applied to it. In painting, by contrast, it is 599–600). It should be noted, however, that Hegel sees the abstract play color above all that is the medium of expression. The point of painting, of colors as an integral part of the depiction of free human beings and for Hegel, is not to show us what it is for free spirit to be fully embodied. does not suggest that painting should ever become purely abstract and It is to show us only what free spirit looks like, how it manifests itself to “musical” (as it did in the twentieth century). the eye. The images of painting thus lack the three-dimensionality of 6.3.4 Music sculpture, but they add the detail and specificity provided by color.

Hegel acknowledges that painting reached a degree of perfection in the The next art in Hegel's “system of the individual arts” is music itself. It, classical world, but he maintains that it is best suited to the expression of too, comes into its own in the period of romantic art. Like sculpture and romantic, Christian spirituality (and the secular freedom of post- painting, but unlike architecture, music gives direct expression to free Reformation modernity) (PKÄ, 181). This is because the absence of subjectivity. Yet music goes even further in the direction of expressing bodily solidity and the presence of color allow the more inward the inwardness of subjectivity by dropping the dimensions of space spirituality of the Christian world to manifest itself as such. If sculpture is altogether. It thus gives no enduring visual expression to such the material embodiment of spirit, painting gives us, as it were, the face subjectivity, but expresses the latter in the organized succession of of spirit in which the soul within manifests itself as the soul within (PKÄ, vanishing sounds. Music, for Hegel, originates in the immediate uttering

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vanishing sounds. Music, for Hegel, originates in the immediate uttering Such music also fulfills the aim of art by expressing the movements of the of feeling or what he calls “interjection”—“the Ah and Oh of the heart” soul and moving the soul in turn to “emotions in sympathy with it” (Aesthetics, 2: 903). Yet music is more than just a cry of pain or a sigh; it (Aesthetics, 2: 894). Over and above this expression, however, is an organized, developed, “cadenced” interjection. Music is thus not just independent music pursues the purely formal development of themes and a sequence of sounds for its own sake, but is the structured expression in harmonies for its own sake. This, in Hegel's view, is a perfectly sounds of inner subjectivity. Through rhythm, harmony and melody music appropriate, indeed necessary, thing for music to do. The danger he sees, allows the soul to hear its own inner movement and to be moved in turn however, is that such formal development can become completely by what it hears. It is “spirit, soul which resounds immediately for itself detached from the musical expression of inward feeling and subjectivity, and feels satisfied in hearing itself [in ihrem Sichvernehmen]” (Aesthetics, and that, as a result, music can cease being a genuine art and become 2: 939, translation altered). mere artistry. Music, as it were, loses its soul and becomes nothing but “skill and virtuosity in compilation” (Aesthetics, 2: 906). At this point, Music expresses, and allows us to hear and enjoy, the movement of the music no longer moves us to feel anything, but simply engages our soul in time through difference and dissonance back into its unity with abstract understanding. It thereby becomes the province of the itself. It also expresses, and moves us to, various different feelings, such “connoisseur” and leaves the layman—who “likes most in music [ … ] as love, longing and joy (Aesthetics, 2: 940). In Hegel's view, however, the intelligible expression of feelings and ideas” (Aesthetics, 2: 953)— the purpose of music is not only to arouse feelings in us, but—as in all behind. genuine art —to enable us to enjoy a sense of reconciliation and satisfaction in what we encounter. This, Hegel contends, is the secret of Hegel admits that he is not as well versed in music as he is in the other truly “ideal” music, the music of Palestrina, Gluck, Haydn and Mozart: arts he discusses. He has a deep appreciation, however, for the music of even in the deepest grief “tranquillity of soul is never missing [ … ]; grief J.S. Bach, Handel and Mozart and his analyses of musical rhythm, is expressed there, too, but it is assuaged at once; [ …] everything is kept harmony and melody are highly illuminating. He was familiar with, firmly together in a restrained form so that jubilation does not degenerate though critical of, the music of his contemporary Carl Maria von Weber, into a repulsive uproar, and even a lament gives us the most blissful and he had a particular affection for Rossini (Aesthetics, 1: 159, 2: 949). tranquillity” (Aesthetics, 2: 939). Surprisingly, he never makes any mention of Beethoven.

Hegel notes that music is able to express feelings with especial clarity 6.3.5 Poetry when it is accompanied by a poetic text, and he had a particular love of both church music and opera. Interestingly, however, he argues that in The last art that Hegel considers is also an art of sound, but sound such cases it is really the text that serves the music, rather than the other understood as the sign of ideas and inner representations—sound as way around, for it is the music above all that expresses the profound speech. This is the art of poetry (Poesie) in the broad sense of the term. movements of the soul (Aesthetics, 2: 934). Yet music does not have to be Hegel regards poetry as the “most perfect art” (PKÄ, 197), because it accompanied by a text; it can also be “independent” instrumental music. provides the richest and most concrete expression of spiritual freedom (in Such music also fulfills the aim of art by expressing the movements of the contrast to sculpture which, in its classical form, gives us the purest ideal

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contrast to sculpture which, in its classical form, gives us the purest ideal Alexander the Great would not have made a good subject for epic poetry, beauty). Poetry is capable of showing spiritual freedom both as because “his world was his army”— his creation under his control—and concentrated inwardness and as action in space and time. It is equally at so was not truly independent of his will [PKÄ, 213].) home in symbolic, classical and romantic art and, in this sense, is the “most unrestricted of the arts” (Aesthetics, 2: 626). Among the great epic poems Hegel discusses are Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy and the mediaeval Spanish poem El Cid. Much of Poetry, for Hegel, is not simply the structured presentation of ideas, but what he has to say about the epic, however, is based on his reading of the articulation of ideas in language, indeed in spoken (rather than just Homer's Iliad. In the modern period, Hegel maintains, the epic gives way written) language. An important aspect of the art of poetry—and what to the novel (PKÄ, 207, 217). clearly marks it off from prose—is thus the musical ordering of words themselves or “versification.” In this respect, Hegel claims, there are In contrast to the epic hero, the subject of lyric poetry does not undertake important differences between classical and romantic art: the ancients tasks, journeys or adventures in the world but simply gives expression— place more emphasis on rhythmic structure in their verse, whereas in in hymns, odes or songs—to the self's ideas and inner feelings. This can Christendom (especially in France and Italy) greater use is made of rhyme be done directly or via the poetic description of something else, such as a (PKÄ, 201–4). rose, wine, or another person. As always, Hegel's remarks about lyric poetry bear witness to his extraordinary erudition and to his critical The three basic forms of poetry identified by Hegel are epic, lyric and acumen. He lavishes particular praise on Goethe's West-Eastern Divan dramatic poetry. (1819) but criticizes the eighteenth-century poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock for wanting to create a new “poetic mythology” (Aesthetics, 2: 6.3.5.1 Epic and Lyric poetry 1154–7; PKÄ, 218).

Epic poetry presents spiritual freedom—that is, free human beings—in 6.3.5.2 Dramatic Poetry the context of a world of circumstances and events. “In the epic,” Hegel states, “individuals act and feel; but their actions are not independent, Dramatic poetry combines the principles of epic and lyric poetry. It events [also] have their right.” What is described in such poetry, shows characters acting in the world—in a given situation —but their therefore, is “a play between actions and events” (PKÄ, 208). Epic actions issue directly from their own inner will (rather than being co- individuals are situated individuals, caught up in a larger enterprise (such determined by events beyond the agent's control). Drama thus presents the as the Trojan War in Homer's Iliad). What they do is thus determined as —all too often self-destructive—consequences of free human action itself. much by the situation in which they find themselves as by their own will, and the consequences of their actions are to a large degree at the mercy of Drama, for Hegel, is the “highest” and most concrete art (PKÄ, 205)—the circumstances. Epic poetry thus shows us the worldly character—and art in which human beings themselves are the medium of aesthetic attendant limitations—of human freedom. (In this respect, Hegel notes, expression. (Seeing a play performed by actors, as opposed to hearing it Alexander the Great would not have made a good subject for epic poetry, read aloud or reading it for oneself, is thus central, in Hegel's view, to the

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read aloud or reading it for oneself, is thus central, in Hegel's view, to the is nonetheless a conflict between two “rights”: the right of consciousness experience of drama [Aesthetics, 2: 1182–5; PKÄ, 223–4].) Drama, to accept responsibility only for what it knows it has done, and the right indeed, is the art in which all the other arts are contained (virtually or of the “unconscious”—of what we do not know—to be accorded respect. actually): “the human being is the living statue, architecture is represented The tragedy of Oedipus is that he pursues his right to uncover the truth by painting or there is real architecture,” and—in particular in Greek about the murder of Laius without ever considering that he himself might drama—there is “music, dance and pantomime” (PKÄ, 223). At this point, be responsible for the murder or, indeed, that there might be anything it is tempting to say that, for Hegel, drama—to use Richard Wagner's about him of which he is unaware (Aesthetics, 2: 1213–14). expression—is the “total work of art” (Gesamtkunstwerk). It is doubtful, however, whether Hegel would have been sympathetic to Wagner's Greek tragic heroes and heroines are moved to act by the ethical (or project. Hegel remarks that drama takes the explicit form of a “totality” in otherwise justified) interest with which they identify, but they act freely in opera, which belongs more to the sphere of music than to drama proper pursuit of that interest. Tragedy shows how such free action leads to (PKÄ, 223). (He has in mind in particular the operas of Gluck and conflict and then to the violent (or sometimes peaceful) resolution of that Mozart.) In drama as such, by contrast, language is what predominates conflict. At the close of the drama, Hegel maintains, we are shattered by and music plays a subordinate role and may even be present only in the the fate of the characters (at least when the resolution is violent). We are virtual form of versification. The Wagnerian idea of a “music drama” that also satisfied by the outcome, because we see that justice has been done. is neither a straightforward opera nor a simple drama would thus appear, Individuals, whose interests—such as the family and the state—should be from Hegel's point of view, to confuse two distinct arts. in harmony with one another, set those interests in opposition to one another; in so doing, however, they destroy themselves and thereby undo Drama, for Hegel, does not depict the richness of the epic world or the very opposition they set up. In the self-destruction of such “one- explore the inner world of lyric feeling. It shows characters acting in sidedly” ethical characters, Hegel believes, we, the audience, see the pursuit of their own will and interest and thereby coming into conflict work of “eternal justice” (Aesthetics, 2: 1198, 1215). This reconciles us to with other individuals (even if, as in the case of Hamlet, after some initial the fate of the characters and so provides the sense of “reconciliation hesitation). Hegel distinguishes between tragic and comic drama and which art should never lack” (Aesthetics, 2: 1173). between classical and romantic versions of each. (He also notes that in some plays, such as Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, tragedy threatens but In modern tragedy—by which Hegel means above all Shakespearean is averted by acts of trust or forgiveness [Aesthetics, 2: 1204].) tragedy—characters are moved not by an ethical interest, but by a subjective passion, such as ambition or jealousy. These characters, In classical Greek tragedy individuals are moved to act by an ethical however, still act freely and destroy themselves through the free pursuit interest or “pathos,” such as concern for the family or for the state. The of their passion. Tragic individuals, therefore—whether ancient or conflict between Antigone and Creon in Sophocles' Antigone is of this modern—are not brought down by fate but are ultimately responsible for kind, as is the conflict acted out in Aeschylus' Oresteia. In Sophocles' their own demise. Indeed, Hegel maintains, “innocent suffering is not the Oedipus the King the conflict is not a straightforwardly ethical one, but it object of high art” (PKÄ, 231–2). Drama that sees people primarily as is nonetheless a conflict between two “rights”: the right of consciousness victims of circumstance or oppression (such as Georg Büchner's Woyzeck

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victims of circumstance or oppression (such as Georg Büchner's Woyzeck not regard such arbitrary mastery as genuine freedom, he argues that [1836]) is thus, from a Hegelian point of view, drama without genuine works of ironic humor in which this mastery is exhibited no longer count tragedy. as genuine works of art. True comedy, by contrast, is the expression of a sense of wholeness, self-confidence and well-being—of subjective In comedy individuals also undermine their own endeavors in some way, freedom and life —that survives the loss of mastery and control over but the purposes that animate them are either inherently trivial ones or one's life. Plays that express such freedom count as genuine works of art. grand ones which they pursue in a laughably inappropriate way. In Yet they are works that show freedom to reside precisely not in the works contrast to tragic characters, truly comic figures do not identify we undertake but within subjectivity itself, within subjectivity that happily themselves seriously with their laughable ends or means. They can thus endures the frustration of its laughable aims. survive the frustration of their purposes, and often come to laugh at themselves, in a way that tragic figures cannot. In this respect, Hegel According to Hegel, the idea that true freedom is to be found in inner claims, characters in many modern comedies, such as those by Molière, spirituality that is prepared to let go of, or to “die to,” its own selfish are frequently ridiculous, but not genuinely comic, characters: we laugh at purposes lies at the heart of religion, specifically of Christianity. True Molière's miser or Shakespeare's Malvolio, but they do not laugh with us comedy, therefore, implicitly points beyond art to religion. It is in this at their own foibles. Truly comic figures are found by Hegel in the plays way—and not by ceasing to be art—that comedy “dissolves” art. of the ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes. What we encounter in such plays, Hegel maintains, is “an infinite light-heartedness and confidence Comedy thus takes art to its limit: beyond comedy there is no further felt by someone raised altogether above his own inner contradiction and aesthetic manifestation of freedom, there is only religion (and not bitter or miserable in it at all: this is the bliss and ease of a man who, philosophy). Religion, in Hegel's view, does not make the aesthetic being sure of himself, can bear the frustration of his aims and expression of freedom redundant; indeed, it is often the source of the achievements” (Aesthetics, 2: 1200). Modern equivalents of such greatest art. Yet religion provides a more profound understanding of Aristophanic light-heartedness may be found in Verdi's Falstaff (1893) freedom than art, just as philosophy provides a clearer and more profound and in the unrivalled comic genius of Homer Simpson, both of which, of understanding of freedom than religion. course, were unknown to Hegel. 7. Conclusion Comedy, in Hegel's view, marks the “dissolution of art” (Aesthetics, 2: 1236). Yet the way in which comedy “dissolves” art differs from the way Hegel's aesthetics has been the focus of—often highly critical—attention in which modern ironic humor does so. Ironic humor—at least of the kind since his death from philosophers such as Heidegger, Adorno and found in the work of Jean Paul Richter—is the expression of the “power Gadamer. Much of this attention has been devoted to his supposed theory of subjective notions, flashes of thought” to “destroy and dissolve of the “end” of art. Perhaps Hegel's most important legacy, however, lies everything that proposes to make itself objective” (Aesthetics, 1: 601). It in the claims that art's task is the presentation of beauty and that beauty is is the expression of the unchallenged mastery of wit. Since Hegel does a matter of content as well as form. Beauty, for Hegel, is not just a matter not regard such arbitrary mastery as genuine freedom, he argues that of formal harmony or elegance; it is the sensuous manifestation in stone,

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of formal harmony or elegance; it is the sensuous manifestation in stone, with the Zusätze in Boumann's text (1845), trans. A.V. Miller color, sound or words of spiritual freedom and life. Such beauty takes a (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) (see 293–7 [pars. 556–63] on art). subtly different form in the classical and romantic periods and also in the Hegel: The Letters, trans. C. Butler and C. Seiler (Bloomington: different individual arts. In one form or another, however, it remains the Indiana University Press, 1984). purpose of art, even in modernity. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction: Reason in History, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University These claims by Hegel are normative, not just descriptive, and impose Press, 1975). certain restrictions on what can count as genuine art in the modern age. Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford They are not, however, claims made out of simple conservatism. Hegel is University Press, 1977) (see 266–89 on “the ethical order” and 424– well aware that art can be decorative, can promote moral and political 53 on “religion in the form of art”). goals, can explore the depths of human alienation or simply record the prosaic details of everyday life, and that it can do so with considerable Transcripts of Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics artistry. His concern, however, is that art that does these things without giving us beauty fails to afford us the aesthetic experience of freedom. In Philosophie der Kunst oder Ästhetik. Nach Hegel. Im Sommer 1826. so doing, it deprives us of a central dimension of a truly human life. Mitschrift Friedrich Carl Hermann Victor von Kehler, eds. A. Gethmann-Siefert and B. Collenberg-Plotnikov (Munich: Wilhelm Bibliography Fink Verlag, 2004). (PKÄ ) Philosophie der Kunst. Vorlesung von 1826, eds. A Gethmann- Hegel's Collected Works Siefert, J.-I. Kwon and K. Berr (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004). (PK) Gesammelte Werke, ed. Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Vorlesung über Ästhetik. Berlin 1820/21. Eine Nachschrift, ed. H. Wissenschaften (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968-). Schneider (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995). (VÄ) Vorlesungen: Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte, ed. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Kunst, ed. A. Gethmann- Members of the Hegel-Archiv (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983-). Siefert (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2003). (VPK) Werke in zwanzig Bänden, eds. E. Moldenhauer and K.M. Michel, 20 vols. and Index (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969-). Secondary Literature in English

English Translations of Key Texts by Hegel Ameriks, Karl, 2002, “Hegel's Aesthetics: New Perspectives on its Response to Kant and Romanticism,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, 2 vols. (Oxford: Great Britain 45/6: 72–92. Clarendon Press, 1975). Aschenberg, Reinhold, 1994, “On the Theoretical Form of Hegel's Hegel's Philosophy of Mind. Being Part Three of the Encyclopaedia Aesthetics,” in Hegel Reconsidered. Beyond Metaphysics and the of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), trans. W. Wallace, together Authoritarian State, eds. H. T. Engelhardt, Jr. and T. Pinkard with the Zusätze in Boumann's text (1845), trans. A.V. Miller

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Authoritarian State, eds. H. T. Engelhardt, Jr. and T. Pinkard Donougho, Martin, 1999, “Hegel's Art of Memory,” in Endings. (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 79–101. Questions of Memory in Hegel and Heidegger, eds. R. Comay and J. Baur, Michael, 1997, “Winckelmann and Hegel on the Imitation of McCumber (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press), 139–59. the Greeks,” in Hegel and the Tradition: Essays in Honour of H.S. D'Oro, Guiseppina, 1996, “Beauties of Nature and Beauties of Art: Harris, eds. M. Baur and J. Russon (Toronto: University of Toronto On Kant and Hegel's Aesthetics,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Press), 93–110. Great Britain 33 (Spring/Summer): 70–86. Bowie, Andrew, 2003, Aesthetics and Subjectivity from Kant to Etter, Brian K., 1999, “Beauty, Ornament, and Style: The Problem of Nietzsche, 2nd. ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Classical Architecture in Hegel's Aesthetics,” in The Owl of Minerva Bungay, Stephen, 1984, Beauty and Truth. A Study of Hegel's 30, 2 (Spring): 211–35. Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Etter, Brian K., 2006, Between Transcendence and Historicism. The Carter, Curtis, 1986, “Hegel and Whitehead on Aesthetic Symbols,” Ethical Nature of the Arts in Hegelian Aesthetics (Albany: SUNY). in Hegel and Whitehead: Contemporary Perspectives on Systematic Fowkes, William, 1981, A Hegelian Account of Contemporary Art Philosophy, ed. G.R. Lucas Jr. (Albany: SUNY Press), 239–57. (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press). Carter, Curtis, 1993, “A Re-examination of the ‘Death of Art’ Gaiger, Jason, 2000, “Art as Made and Sensuous: Hegel, Danto and Interpretation of Hegel's Aesthetics,” in Selected Essays on G.W.F. the ‘End of Art’,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain Hegel, ed. L.S. Stepelevich (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities 41/2: 104–19. Press), 11–27. Gaiger, Jason, 2006, “Catching up with History: Hegel and Abstract Desmond, William, 1985, “Hermeneutics and Hegel's Aesthetics,” Painting,” in Hegel: New Directions, ed. K. Deligiorgi (Chesham: Irish Philosophical Journal 2: 94–104. Acumen), 159–76. Desmond, William, 1986, Art and the Absolute. A Study of Hegel's Gardiner, Patrick, 1987, “Kant and Hegel on Aesthetics,” in Hegel's Aesthetics (Albany: SUNY Press). Critique of Kant, ed. S. Priest (Oxford: Oxford University Press), Desmond, William, 1999 “Gothic Hegel,” in The Owl of Minerva 30, 161–71. 2 (Spring): 237–52. Geulen, Eva, 2006, The End of Art. Readings in a Rumor after Donougho, Martin, 1982, “Remarks on ‘Humanus heißt der Hegel, trans. J. McFarland (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Heilige’,” Hegel-Studien 17: 214-25. Guyer, Paul, 1990, “Hegel on Kant's Aesthetics: Necessity and Donougho, Martin, 1989, “The Woman in White: On the Reception Contingency in Beauty and Art,” in Hegel und die “Kritik der of Hegel's Antigone,” The Owl of Minerva 21, 1 (Fall): 65–89. Urteilskraft,” eds. H.-F. Fulda and R.-P. Horstmann (Stuttgart: Donougho, Martin, 1997, “Hegel as Philosopher of the Temporal Klett-Cotta), 81-99. [irdischen] World: On the Dialectics of Narrative,” in Hegel and the Hamacher, Werner, 1998, “(The End of Art with the Mask),” in Tradition: Essays in Honour of H.S. Harris, eds. M. Baur and J. Hegel after Derrida, ed. S. Barnett (London: Routledge), 105–30. Russon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 111–39. Hammermeister, Kai, 2002, The German Aesthetic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Minerva 29, 1 (Fall): 1–21. Harries, Karsten, 1974, “Hegel on the Future of Art,” The Review of Houlgate, Stephen, 2000, “Hegel and the Art of Painting,” in Hegel Metaphysics 27: 677–96. and Aesthetics, ed. W. Maker (Albany: SUNY Press), 61–82. Harries, Karsten, 1999, “The Epochal Threshold and the Classical Houlgate, Stephen, 2005, An Introduction to Hegel. Freedom, Truth Ideal: Hölderlin contra Hegel,” in The Emergence of German and History, 2nd. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell) (chapter 9: “Art and Idealism, eds. M. Baur and D. Dahlstrom (Washington, D.C.: Human Wholeness”). Catholic University of America Press), 147–75. Houlgate, Stephen (ed.), 2007, Hegel and the Arts (Evanston, Ill.: Harris, H.S., 1984, “The Resurrection of Art,” The Owl of Minerva Northwestern University Press). 16, 1 (Fall): 5–20. Johnson, Julian, 1991, “Music in Hegel's Aesthetics: A Re- Hendrix, John Shannon, 2005, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of evaluation,” British Journal of Aesthetics 31: 152–62. Spirit. From Plotinus to Schelling and Hegel (New York: Peter Kain, Philip J., 1982, Schiller, Hegel, and Marx: State, Society, and Lang). the Aesthetic Ideal of Ancient Greece (Kingston, Ontario: McGill- Henrich, Dieter, 1979, “Art and Philosophy of Art Today: Queen's University Press). Reflections with Reference to Hegel,” in New Perspectives in Kaminsky, Jack, 1962, Hegel on Art. An Interpretation of Hegel's German Literary Criticism, eds. R.E. Amacher and V. Lange, trans. Aesthetics (Albany: SUNY Press). D.H. Wilson et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 107–33. Lampert, Jay, 2001, “Why is there no Category of the City in Hegel's Henrich, Dieter, 1985, “The Contemporary Relevance of Hegel's Aesthetics?,” British Journal of Aesthetics 41: 312–24. Aesthetics,” in Hegel, ed. M. Inwood (Oxford: Oxford University Magnus, Kathleen Dow, 2001, Hegel and the Symbolic Mediation of Press), 199–207. Spirit (Albany: SUNY Press). Hilmer, Brigitte, 1998, “Being Hegelian after Danto,” History and Maker, William (ed.), 2000, Hegel and Aesthetics (Albany: SUNY Theory 37, 4: 71–86. Press). Houlgate, Stephen, 1986a, “Review of A. Gethmann-Siefert, Die McCumber, John, 1989, Poetic Interaction: Language, Freedom, Funktion der Kunst in der Geschichte,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). of Great Britain 13 (Spring/Summer): 33–42. McCumber, John, 1999, “Schiller, Hegel, and the Aesthetics of Houlgate, Stephen, 1986b, “Review of S. Bungay, Beauty and German Idealism,” in The Emergence of German Idealism, eds. M. Truth,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 14 Baur and D. Dahlstrom (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of (Autumn/Winter): 4–20. America Press), 133–46. Houlgate, Stephen, 1986c, Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Moran, Michael, 1981, “On the Continuing Significance of Hegel's Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) (chapter 8: Aesthetics,” British Journal of Aesthetics 21: 214–39. “Hegel and Nietzsche on Tragedy”). Pillow, Kirk, 2000, Sublime Understanding: Aesthetic Reflection in Houlgate, Stephen, 1997, “Hegel and the ‘End’ of Art,” The Owl of Kant and Hegel (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Minerva 29, 1 (Fall): 1–21.

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Pippin, Robert, 2007, “What was Abstract Art? (From the Point of Cambridge University Press), 348–77. View of Hegel),” in Hegel and the Arts, ed. S. Houlgate (Evanston, Wicks, Robert, 1994, Hegel's Theory of Aesthetic Judgment (New Ill.: Northwestern University Press), 244–70. York: Peter Lang). Pippin, Robert, 2008, “The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel's Winfield, Richard Dien, 1994, “The Individuality of Art and the Aesthetics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth- Collapse of Metaphysical Aesthetics,” American Philosophical Century Philosophy, ed. F.C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge Quarterly 31, 1: 39–51. University Press), 394–418. Winfield, Richard Dien, 1995, “Hegel, Romanticism, and Roche, Mark William, 1998, Tragedy and Comedy. A Systematic Modernity,” The Owl of Minerva 27, 1 (Fall): 3–18. Study and a Critique of Hegel (Albany: SUNY Press). Winfield, Richard Dien, 1996, Stylistics. Rethinking the Artforms Sallis, John, 1994, Stone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). after Hegel (Albany: SUNY Press). Schmidt, Dennis J., 2001, On Germans and Other Greeks. Tragedy Wyss, Beat, 1999, Hegel's Art History and the Critique of Modernity and Ethical Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Speight, Allen, 2008, “Hegel and Aesthetics: The Practice and ‘Pastness’ of Art,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Secondary Literature in German Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, ed. F.C. Beiser (Cambridge: Belli, Alessandra Lazzerini, 1998/99, “Hegel und Rossini. Das Cambridge University Press), 378–93. Singen, das man in der Seele empfindet,” Jahrbuch für Steinkraus, Warren, and Schmitz, Kenneth (eds.), 1980, Art and Hegelforschung 4/5: 231–61. Logic in Hegel's Philosophy (New Jersey: Humanities Press). Bubner, Rüdiger, 1990, “Gibt es ästhetische Erfahrung bei Hegel?,” Taft, Richard, 1987, “Art and Philosophy in the Early Development in Hegel und die “Kritik der Urteilskraft,” eds. H.-F. Fulda and R.- of Hegel's System,” The Owl of Minerva 18, 2 (Spring): 145–62. P. Horstmann (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta), 69-80. Taminiaux, Jacques, 1999, “The Hegelian Legacy in Heidegger's Espiña, Yolanda, 1997, “Kunst als Grenze: Die Musik bei Hegel,” Overcoming of Aesthetics,” in Endings. Questions of Memory in Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung 3: 103–33. Hegel and Heidegger, eds. R. Comay and J. McCumber (Evanston, Franke, Ursula, and Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie, 2005, Ill.: Northwestern University Press), 114–38. Kulturpolitik und Kunstgeschichte. Perspektiven der Hegelschen Tsakiridou, Cornelia A., 1991, “Darstellung: Reflections on Art, Ästhetik (Hamburg: Felix Meiner). Logic, and System in Hegel,” The Owl of Minerva 23, 1 (Fall): 15– Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie, 1984, Die Funktion der Kunst in der 28. Geschichte. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Ästhetik (Bonn: Bouvier Westphal, Kenneth, 1997, “Hegel, Formalism, and Robert Turner's Verlag). Ceramic Art,” Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung 3: 259–83. Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie, and Pöggeler, Otto (eds.), 1986, Welt Wicks, Robert, 1993, “Hegel's Aesthetics: An Overview,” in The und Wirkung von Hegels Ästhetik (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag). Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. F.C. Beiser (Cambridge: Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie (ed.), 1992, Phänomen versus System: Cambridge University Press), 348–77. Zum Verhältnis von philosophischer Systematik und Kunsturteil in

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Zum Verhältnis von philosophischer Systematik und Kunsturteil in Kontext hegelianischer und moderner Überlegungen zur Komödie,” Hegels Berliner Vorlesungen über Ästhetik oder Philosophie der Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung 8/9: 83–108. Kunst (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag). Rollmann, Veit-Justus, 2005, Das Kunstschöne in Hegels Ästhetik Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie, 1993, “Hegel über Kunst und am Beispiel der Musik (Marburg: Tectum). Alltäglichkeit: Zur Rehabilitierung der schönen Kunst und des Schneider, Helmut, 1995, “Hegels Theorie der Komik und die ästhetischen Genusses,” Hegel-Studien 28: 215–65. Auflösung der schönen Kunst,” Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung 1: 81– Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie, 2005, Einführung in Hegels Ästhetik 110. (Stuttgart: UTB). Ziemer, Elisabeth, 1993, Heinrich Gustav Hotho (1802-1873). Ein Hast, Klaus, 1991, Hegels ästhetische Reflexion des freien Subjekts. Berliner Kunsthistoriker, Kunstkritiker und Philosoph (Berlin: Der Satz vom Ende der Kunst im Lichte eines vernachlässigten Reimer Verlag). Aspekts (New York: Peter Lang). Hilmer, Brigitte, 1997, Scheinen des Begriffs. Hegels Logik der Other Relevant Works Kunst (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag). Adorno, T.W., Aesthetic Theory, trans. R. Hullot-Kentor (London: Kwon, Jeong-Im, 2001, Hegels Bestimmung der Kunst. Die Athlone Press, 1977). Bedeutung der “symbolischen Kunstform” in Hegels Ästhetik Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie, and Pöggeler, Otto (eds.), 1995, (Munich: Wilhelm Fink). Kunst als Kulturgut. Die Bildersammlung der Brüder Boisserée Oetjen, Malte, 2003, Das Ende der Kunst bei Hegel (Norderstedt: (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag). GRIN Verlag). Herodotus, The Histories, trans. A de Sélincourt, rev. J. Marincola Pöggeler, Otto et al (eds.), 1981, Hegel in Berlin. Preußische (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2003). Kulturpolitik und idealistische Ästhetik. Zum 150. Todestag des Kant, Immanuel, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. P. Guyer Philosophen (Berlin: Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz). and E. Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Pöggeler, Otto, und Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie (eds.), 1983, Pippin, Robert, 2005, The Persistence of Subjectivity. On the Kunsterfahrung und Kulturpolitik im Berlin Hegels (Bonn: Bouvier Kantian Aftermath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Verlag). Schiller, Friedrich, 1793, “Kallias or Concerning Beauty: Letters to Pöggeler, Otto, 1984, Die Frage nach der Kunst. Von Hegel zu Gottfried Körner”, in Classical and Romantic German Aesthetics, ed. Heidegger (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber). J.M. Bernstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Rinaldi, Giacomo, 2002/03, “Musik und Philosophie im Ausgang 145–83. von Hegel,” Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung 8/9: 109–117. Roche, Mark William, 2002/03, “Größe und Grenzen von Hegels Other Internet Resources Theorie der Tragödie,” Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung 8/9: 53–81. Roche, Mark William, 2002/03, “Hegels Theorie der Komödie im Hegel Society of America Kontext hegelianischer und moderner Überlegungen zur Komödie,”

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Hegel Society of Great Britain

Related Entries

Adorno, Theodor W. | aesthetics: German, in the 18th century | art, definition of | Gadamer, Hans-Georg: aesthetics | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich | Herder, Johann Gottfried von | Kant, Immanuel: aesthetics and teleology | Nietzsche, Friedrich | Nietzsche, Friedrich: aesthetics | Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von | Schlegel, Friedrich | Schopenhauer, Arthur | Schopenhauer, Arthur: aesthetics

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